


In An Isolated System, Entropy Can Only Increase

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Beating, Blackouts, Cock Rings, Dissociation, Genital Abuse, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Makeshift Gag (briefly), Manipulation, Mind Wipes, Needles (briefly), Oh god I'm sorry these tags, Physical Abuse, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sexual Assault, Unconscious Sex, dubcon, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2303960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hydra Trash Meme prompt: training the asset to withstand all sorts of pain.</p>
<p>High above, the smile falls and is replaced by a look of concern, as the man raises his boot. “This is going to hurt.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In An Isolated System, Entropy Can Only Increase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alcibiades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/gifts).



> _We sink, we swim, we rise, we fall - we meet our fate together._

They grab him and take him in.

"You won’t feel a thing," they say.

Somehow, Bucky doesn’t believe them.

Sitting, crouched with his head back against the wall and his feet to the concrete floor, he scans the room for weapons. Nothing. Nada.

Not true: the wall is a weapon. He can produce enough force the crack the head of anyone they bring in this room - he thinks - on that floor, on that wall. On the ceiling if required.

He lacks his knives, his guns, his grenades. Still, he has his hands, his teeth. Those are usually enough.

And his arm.

Bucky waits for instruction and counts the seconds they leave him in here. Something far-off, deep in his brain, is calling it a “drunk-tank”, but he has no idea what that is.

Someone enters. It’s a HYDRA employee, kitted out with every new piece of uniform they’ve been given this year. The employee nods to two other guards outside: funny, Bucky thinks, perhaps they think he’ll disobey.

The door closes. The two of them are together.

With a clatter of clasps and a soft  _shhhup_ , the employee removes their HYDRA mask and shakes out their hair. Blond. It’s not a man Bucky recognises.

"Hello, asset."

Bucky only stares back at him, silent, obeying his teaching.

The man drops the mask to the floor and smiles. “You can talk to me. My clearance supersedes the average HYDRA recruit - or, more specifically, the entirety of HYDRA. Your boss included.”

"I’m not supposed to speak," Bucky responds, then lapses into silence again.

"No, of course. Of course you’re not." The man steps closer, looming over him, but Bucky isn’t afraid. He has calculated the weaponry in this room.

High above, the smile falls and is replaced by a look of concern, as the man raises his boot. “This is going to hurt.”

The boot slams down on Bucky’s crotch with no more warning and he lurches forward, gasping, one arm going automatically to protect himself, and the boot has gone, but the man is still standing there, watching him.

Bucky takes it. He recovers, slowly, sitting back against the wall now with sweat beading on his brow. Pain is nothing new to him. It is usually an instrument used to better him.

"Good," the man says, absently, as if to himself. He gets down on one knee opposite Bucky and the smile returns. "You can call me David." He points towards him. "You’re fascinating, soldier."

David holds out a hand and Bucky, bemused, takes it. Their hands move up and down, and then David lets go. Bucky makes a mental note to research the action later.

He had seen it before, when Pierce had introduced him to HYDRA’s board, fresh out of combat training and (temporarily) released from evaluation. Pierce taking the hand of Senator Stern.

It had looked congratulatory then. Maybe a mark of respect.

Bucky shifts in his seat.

David stands back up and Bucky notes idly that he wears a concealed handgun on his hip and a knife in his belt.

"We’re experimenting with pain, today," David says, stretching his booted foot against the floor. "Both immediate and gradual. I trust that you will comply."

Automatic. Bucky raises his head and nods.

The boot this time is slow, starting square between his legs at only a light pressure, before it intensifies. Bucky forces himself to breathe, though it comes in fits and starts through his nose, then through gritted teeth. His eyes shine.

He knows that David is watching. He’s much closer now - he has to be, to get this much control. Bucky’s fingers curl into fists at his side.

And-  _it’s_ _off._  Bucky lets out a great whoosh of air, refusing to let his hands move to protect himself. David stays with him for a moment, until Bucky looks up at him from under the strands of hair sticking to his forehead.

Then David steps back.

"Recovery is sixty seconds. Secretary Pierce has told me you are adept at keeping time: now show me that he is correct."

The clock starts in Bucky’s chest, ten seconds for every full breath. Four in, six out; four in, six out. Six breaths in total.

"Now," he says, shallowly, when the time has come.

The boot comes down again.

-

David doesn’t alternate. He gives him three gradual pressures before another slam, and this time when Bucky curls inward and braces himself against the ground with his metal arm, the boot turns into kicks, aimed at his stomach and anywhere else he attempts to cover up with his hand.

The beatings abruptly stop, then, and when Bucky looks up, David is standing in the middle of the room, giving him some space.

To his right, the door opens, and Bucky squints at the bright light coming in, before looking back to David.

"You can leave, if you want," David says. "No one’s going to stop you."

The two HYDRA employees outside of the door peer in with curiosity at the suited-up man with a smile in his eyes, and the soldier splayed out on the floor.

"No," says Bucky, after a while, in the tone of someone who’s made a regrettable decision.

"This isn’t a test," David says, and Bucky meets his eyes. No answer.

David motions to the employees and the door slides shut again, cutting off the daylight and leaving them in this badly-lit hole.

Bucky braces and prepares for another round: his sixty seconds are up and they’re on overtime. He should have said something earlier, but the pain…

"You can stop the clock," David says, turning away from him and going to the other side of the small room. He puts his back to the wall and slides down into a sit, like Bucky. "End of first quarter."

-

They sit awhile. Bucky doesn’t move, and feels his system slowly recover, inch by inch, twinge by twinge. He wonders whether he will bruise, and if so, for how long.

His eyes are fixed permanently on the man across the room.

"You know," comes David’s voice, eventually, "When I first joined HYDRA, I was given a choice. Occupation." He folds his hands loosely in his lap. 

"My skill set - useful as it was to the administration - could be used in a number of different ways. Like you, soldier. You’re a tool to be used, in the right circumstance."

David leans forward. “Let me ask you something. Have you ever struck out against a fellow agent? Have you thought about how easily you could kill your keepers?” He isn’t smiling anymore. “Are you fantasizing about overpowering me?”

Bucky looks at him, then tilts his chin upward a little. The reply is the same: a solemn mouthful. “No.”

David’s forehead twitches a little at the corner. “Pity. You won’t have as many choices, soldier. They’ve broken you down too far.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to think about that.

Slowly, like he wants to enjoy it, David stretches, then begins to come across the floor towards him. He stops at Bucky’s knees.

"Do you know hate? Do you know how it feels to hate someone?"

Bucky feels the sweat beginning to start again, right up in the corners of his temples. “If I develop a flaw, they repair me.”

"Those are very fancy words they’ve given you for forgetting."

His hands are on the floor next to Bucky’s feet - he knows this by sense more than sight - he won’t take his eyes off his instructor.

"Why are you watching me so carefully if you’re not intending to react?" David asks.

"Preparation," Bucky answers.

David’s hand rises to Bucky’s knees, and he pushes one aside, staring at Bucky with the unspoken request that he lower the other leg too. His hand comes to rest on the waistband of Bucky’s pants, in the end.

All of the fire that left him before is back now, singeing him, burning him. With every tiny movement on his crotch, Bucky can feel nerves screaming, can feel tears coming unbidden to his eyes, can feel them building up on his eyelashes.

A ragged breath rushes its way out of him.

"And so pretty too," David murmurs. "No wonder they kept you."

His other hand joins it - David shuffling forward between Bucky’s legs - finding a button and zipper and undoing both. Bucky can only blink rapidly and stare over his head, finally breaking eye contact, trying desperately to quell the fire beneath his stomach.

He’s thinking he can do it, just maybe, when a rough hand comes out of nowhere and grabs his crotch through the fabric of his pants.

Bucky  _hisses_  and scrabbles uncontrollably, one hand darting down to grab at the arm there. David knocks it away. The fingers bite in, so close now that he can feel his pulse echoing through the fabric, hot and burning.

Then the pressure releases, and Bucky takes in a shuddering breath. Despite his best efforts, there are beads of salt water dotting his cheeks, thrown there during the struggle. He ignores them and closes his eyes, trying to concentrate on breathing, not moving. This shouldn’t be hurting.

David’s fingers make their way to his waistband again, and this time he’s gentler, pulling on them, making it known that he wants them down. Bucky blinks open his eyes and raises his hips off the floor, helping him do it. They are loose fitted anyway, not like the jeans he has seen other agents wear: the ones that stick to them like skin.

David pushes them down Bucky’s thighs, his hands occasionally diverting to clutch at the skin there, leaving little red patches. Bucky’s underwear comes next: something black and comfortable, nondescript. David laughs at this and he can’t tell why.

He doesn’t take his pants all the way off, though. Just down to his knees. Bucky understands why when David moves forward, kneeling on the fabric so that he can’t lift his legs.

"I could lift them," he says.

"I know," David answers.

Bucky can’t help but look down eventually. He needs to assess the damage.

It’s not good: his whole crotch is a spectrum of reds. His cock is the darkest, and his balls are mottled with faint blue tinges waiting to go black. There are reddening pink marks all around them, partially hidden in dark hair. He wonders if he’ll be able to look closer later.

The first thing David goes for is his balls. He separates Bucky’s soft shaft from them with his middle finger, gripping around the base of them. Like he’s assessing the best place to cut them off.

A clear, cold sweat courses down Bucky’s back at the thought that he really might be.

"Have you experienced physical punishment to your genitals before?"

"No," he says.

"Have you experienced physical stimulation to your genitals before?"

"Yes."

"Have you experienced physical pleasure before?"

Bucky doesn’t answer this one.

It’s not the right response. David curls his finger and thumb tighter around his balls and whips his other hand across them, just like that.

Bucky gasps and curls forward, only to find himself held by that grip. He falls back against the wall with a noise of pain. His heart rate has gone up tenfold. 

"I’ll ask again. Have you experienced physical pleasure before?"

He still doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know what to say.

David raises his hand again, and Bucky holds up his own. “Wait!”

With David watching him, he struggles through an attempt to convey why the answer is inconclusive. “I… may have- maybe. Before.”

"Before?"

"Before," Bucky says. He doesn’t have a word for it.

Slowly, the grin makes its way back onto David’s face, and his grip lessens up on his balls. “Did you agree to it?”

Bucky doesn’t answer again, only moves his hips in little circles, trying and failing to combat the pain. He has the same look on his face.

David rewords it. “Did they ask you for your consent?”

Bucky looks at him as if he’s seriously behind on protocol. “No one asks me for that.”

"Not before?"

His eyes go far away for a second, like he’s trying to remember. Then finally: “I don’t think so.”

David’s hand moves. It’s above his dick now, pressing fingertips into the red and pink splotches. Bucky’s flesh twitches every time he picks a particularly raw spot.

The fingers dig in deeper and he grits his teeth, trying to melt into the floor below to escape them.

"Forget it," David says, and Bucky tries, tries to move past the pain, tries to ignore the ache in his balls, or in his stomach, tries to focus on anything but how it hurts.

He should be healing. He should be moving past this. David is too quick.

In the second his heartbeat slows, a hand grabs his cock, and Bucky stiffens with a yell. That part of him has taken so much abuse already, for it to be roughly handled now is just too much.

"Listen to me," David is saying.  _"Forget it._  The pain isn’t real.”

He moves his hand, and Bucky flinches, letting out little sobs of agony in time with each movement. He’s on fire, he’s on fire, he’s burning and it’s out of control, he can’t stand it, he can’t  _stand-_

_-_

It takes him long - too long - to realise the pain has died away. Or, not died, but dulled. Like it’s gone away behind a glass pane.

He digs himself back up out of the black and wakes, finding himself pressed right back against the wall. The cold cement is grazing his cheekbone; his eyes are held tight shut. Bucky feels hands that were balled into fists slowly relax and curl open, before he opens his eyes.

He’s facing the side of the wall, so he peels his face away from it and reorients his body again. David is still there, doing something. There’s fire, but it’s far away, and it’s overridden by this unlikely-

Pleasure.

He’s not held against the wall at all. He must have frozen like that, stuck fast like ice.

His hair is in his eyes. He asks a question. “What are you doing?”

David looks up at him, and Bucky can see more now. His hand is still there, but where is it, where is the pain?

"Succeeding," David says, then smiles. "You’re doing well."

He pumps his hand as if to demonstrate, and Bucky feels a familiar flare of pain, but following on its heels is- oh, so much better. Strange and bizarre but better.

David lets go, and Bucky rocks forward, longing for that touch to come back, even if it makes him feel odd, so odd.

"Shh," David says, "I have something for you."

Bucky’s eyes must say that he’ll gladly take anything nice.

His gift is a white rag of some kind. Bucky looks at it in brief confusion, before David leans right forward, looming over his body, and Bucky’s cock throbs.

"Open your mouth," David says, and Bucky does.

The rag stretches out across his lips, and David makes sure it will stay there before he reaches around Bucky’s head to tie it on the other side.

A makeshift gag, he thinks. There was a training exercise that used these, once. The edges bite into the corners of his mouth, and Bucky touches the rag with his tongue. It’s tight, but not uncomfortable.

David gives him an approving glance, before reaching down and curling his hand around Bucky’s dick, arching into the soldier’s chest on the upward arc of the stroke. Bucky shivers and makes a quiet noise into his rag.

"One more, then we’ll continue," David says, leaning back onto his knees and removing something else from his pocket. In the brief thrill of the moment, Bucky hopes it’s the knife.

Instead, it’s something else silver and cold. David smirks at him, then reaches down and takes hold of his erection. One of the hoops in the silver device goes around that, all the way down, and David, clearly trying not to cause pain at the moment, gently guides his balls into the other hoop.

"What is the point of pain?" he asks him, when the metal ring in his hand slots into place.

Bucky only gazes across at him, waiting for the answer. It sounded rhetorical, and he’s only ever supposed to  _receive_  information, not guess at it.

"The point of pain is to enhance," continues David. "It sharpens your awareness. Focuses your mind. Pain gives us what pleasure cannot."

Bucky surprises himself with muffled words. “Did they do this to you?”

David seems pleased he spoke, but doesn’t answer him.

"Turn over. On your knees, please."

Bucky turns, slow, trying not to get too tangled in the pants now slipping down around his ankles; trying not to touch his dick to the cold hard floor. He stops in the right position, squatting there on his haunches.

A hand appears on his back, between his shoulder blades, and pushes him forward until his hands are against the wall in front of him. Bucky hears the swish of something being removed from David’s kit.

Cold steel greets his skin at the very base of his spine, then slides along it in juddering, precise movements. Bucky doesn’t have much in the way of an emotional spectrum anymore - not a healthy one, anyway - but he does feel a twinkle of discontent as the jacket is cut away. He really does like that jacket.

When the leather has gone, the shirt beneath it is next, and David leaves the remains of the clothing to slip slowly down Bucky’s shoulders.

The scissors are put away, then Bucky feels hands on him, rough and semi-callused, the way years make them. He wonders how old David is, or how old he was when he first started.

"Brace yourself," David says, and out of nowhere a fist connects with the right half of Bucky’s back, sending bruising pain all the way up his side.

_"Ahh,"_  Bucky chokes out, involuntarily, and shifts in his position. It’s harder to keep quiet with his mouth kept open.

The fist then connects with the other side, sparking up pain - a fire - to join his right. Bucky feels the marks as the moon might feel craters, or the blast zones of land mines. He rolls his shoulders back and lowers his head, hair swinging into his eyes.

A pause, then-  _THWACK._

His arm begins to shake slightly. It’s something different now. Some contraption made for this kind of training. Bucky thinks he will find stripes wherever it lands.

_THWACK. THWACK._

His forehead is against the wall: the only still-cold part of him. His shoulders are burning, his cock  _hurts_  red, his back is aflame. He can see the glint of metal through his barely open eyes, clutched tight around his cock. He shouldn’t even be hard anymore - David’s no longer touching him like that. He supposes that is the purpose of the device.

David hits him again and he jerks forward with a gasp.

"They really made you different, didn’t they?" says the voice from behind him.

_Different… more powerful?_ Bucky thinks.  _My metal arm? Strength?_

"You don’t respond to pain like a normal man."

"I heal," Bucky says, glad for the brief respite. His legs have started quivering again. He estimates it will take about ten more minutes at this level of discipline before they start to give out.

"I know, but you still feel it."

Another blow clocks him against his back as if to make the point.

"You feel it and you don’t enjoy it, but you don’t shy away from it, either."

"I have to," Bucky says, and while that doesn’t quite make sense in context, it is most definitely an answer.

David gets down on the floor behind him, and he hears the dull sound of something being placed on the ground. The tool, maybe.

"What would it take for you to enjoy it?"

Bucky doesn’t answer, and his leg starts trembling more. His metal arm is the only part of him that feels stable: cold, like stone.

For once, he doesn’t get punished for not answering a direct question. All he hears is the silence behind him, and the rough flow of himself breathing through the rag.

He hears David come closer, then a hand starts working its way underneath the fabric biting into the skin of his cheek. One finger hooks under the rag and pulls it down, down, until it sticks in the hollow beneath Bucky’s lower lip, but David still has a hold on it and he’s turning his head and-

"Do you even know?" David says, and his eyes look so dark in the weak overhead light, and he keeps his hold on Bucky’s rag as he lowers his chin.

Bucky still has his hands on the wall, and David is looking at him over his arm. The cold stone metal one.

"Do you?" David says, and leans forward and touches his lips to the metal. Bucky can’t feel it, he can’t, but he’s watching and that’s close enough.

The same shiver goes through him as it did earlier, and Bucky can’t take his eyes off the man. It’s like his brain is going into hyper-focus, everything slow and hazed. Like after they erase him, but nicer.

David bites down onto the metal with a  _clink_  and Bucky’s eyelids slip lower. There’s a hot sweat starting in the small of his back, and he adjusts his leg so that it’s no longer shaking without even thinking about it.

"Do  _you?”_  Bucky echoes, and watches David move his mouth up his arm, pressing his lips to his elbow; his inner elbow; along his arm; up to his shoulder. He imagines that David’s lips are dry and his teeth are sharp, until he wets his lips and then every touch leaves a mark from  _someone else._

He’s so engrossed that it doesn’t occur to him what’s about to happen until David is moving up his shoulder, onto his neck, and onto the bone of his jaw.

With the rag there binding him, Bucky can’t tilt his chin up in response, but David isn’t staying there, he’s going instead for the jut of his lower lip, mouth capturing Bucky’s own in what he can’t help but define as a kiss.

His heartbeat is so strong and loud that he wonders if David can feel it, if there’s enough to sense within the blood in his lips to know the measure of his response. They break away haphazardly from something so chaste, but Bucky keeps his head so close to David’s, staring unsteadily into his eyes. 

He finally finds the words, somewhere in the no man’s land between orders and desires. Bucky inhales, then exhales:  _"More."_

David smiles like he’s made his day and readjusts his position on the floor. “Of course.”

Bucky is as malleable as he’s ever been, and turns so that his back is to the wall and his legs are splayed with only the tiniest of touches from David. He lets the rest of the jacket come off without a word.

Then, his eyes draw downward and he notices what the device has done: mottled or not, the dark red of his cock is there because the blood rushing to it has been kept there. He wonders whether he’ll ever be this hard again, before David nestles between his legs and leans forward, hands against the wall either side of Bucky and mouth ready to be claimed.

They meet, and David’s teeth are sharp but Bucky discovers biting and tongues at the same time and they break away, each tasting his own dark bruises. Bucky’s cock is pooling pre-cum on his stomach, leaving wet smudges on David’s HYDRA jacket, and he fears retaliation for a second before David unzips it and uncoils it onto Bucky’s lap, groping him for a moment through the leather.

He’s wearing some nondescript t-shirt underneath, and Bucky reaches for him, hands coming to rest just touching David’s hips. “I want it off,” he says, awkwardly and slowly just like everything else.

"As you wish," David says, grinning, and pulls it off from the bottom up, over his head, and Bucky’s eyes stick like glue to the skin he reveals beneath. He touches David’s abdomen with the hand that can feel, finding it warm and soft like his own skin.

"See? Totally normal. Just like yours."

David still has that trademark smile on his face, and Bucky attempts to echo it, aware that he may have added too many teeth and not enough of the other creased changes to look the part.

David reaches forward and takes his cheek in his hand, tugging on it. “You look good.”

He lets go and Bucky can still feel the imprint.

Then, somehow, like a rubber band snapping, the world bends, shaping only into David’s skin - cooler than Bucky’s - leaning closer, hands forward, and Bucky imagines being pushed down against a bed; being pushed back against a wall; a road, his cheekbone scraping against it; all of the events and David’s eyes and his skin rolling around in Bucky’s head like marbles.

In the end, he remembers: outstretched hand, holding his face. He remembers being watched and assessed. Is this a test? Is this even a training exercise anymore? He can’t seem to remember why he came here; what they tell him; what they will say about him later.

David gets him off. But he forgets.

He comes back as the last few wet spurts are coating his chest and the floor (he’s face down, not sure when that happened) and there’s a hand in the center of his back.

"Wake up," David is saying, and Bucky recognises that tone. He knows it well. That is the voice of a superior.

He gasps in air and flexes his fingers. His metal hand extends reflexively and digs a small groove in the floor - he stops it quickly before it can do any real damage.

David gets off his back - why was he on top of him? - and stands behind him, staying there. “You were asleep,” he says. “You weren’t there.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, the way he’s been trained to. When confronted by anger, the asset must always submit, and the best and most reliable way to achieve that objective is to ensure that he remains silent.

A hand comes down on his shoulder, right at the fusion point.

"Answer me."

Said hand stays there, and in the silence that stretches out longer and longer, David’s nails press into the scar tissue in his skin. It hurts.

Most of him hurts, Bucky realises at this point. His back and genitals the most. The rag, too, has left a tender imprint below his lip, but it has now slipped down past his chin, turning into some kind of pauper’s necktie.

Bucky closes his eyes.

David’s weight falls more heavily on their point of contact as he leans over, head coming to rest just past Bucky’s shoulder, who keeps his own still.

"Don’t close your eyes," David says, voice low, but sweet. Comforting. "You were doing so well. You could have everything you’ve ever wanted."

He wants to keep them closed - god, he wants to - but David’s voice is so enticing and has been so kind that Bucky turns his face back towards him, until they are cheek to cheek, and he’s feeling the press of David’s body over him, like he should.

"There now. That’s better. Are you feeling a little more okay?"

They are so close now that Bucky feels the words as vibrations through skin and low murmurs rather than pure sound. He nods, slowly, and David echoes it.

"I want you to come here," David says, breaking contact, and Bucky turns around, surprised, but David’s backing away and sinking down in one corner of the cell - no doubt it’s a cell, absolutely no doubt now, it’s a certainty in Bucky Barnes’ mind.

Bucky steadily works his way off the floor and crawls over to join him. He sits on his heels once he gets there, unsure of what has been asked.

David shifts his knees over to the right and looks at the space left next to him. Now it makes some kind of sense.

Well, does it really?

He fills the space as asked, and they sit for a while without saying anything, Bucky’s breathing gradually coming back to normal, and the pinging electricity between them both pulsing and changing just like David’s skin, David’s eyes, the cold cell walls…

There’s an arm now. An arm around him. It’s on the landscape of bruises across his shoulders, and the clusters of nerves along them object to that, but Bucky shuts them down and just looks at the arm instead.

"Apart from the medical staff - or the mechanical, I suppose," David glances over at him. "No one here ever touches you, do they?"

Bucky shakes his head after a moment. Not like he has; no, not like him.

The arm stays around his shoulder and he discovers that he kind of appreciates it. There’s a hand attached to it too and sometimes it curls around his metal shoulder. Bucky can’t feel that, but he knows it’s there, and really that’s good enough. That’s good enough, he thinks. It’s good enough.

-

He’s desensitized to needles (they’ve stuck so many in him), but he feels the one they’re taking out of his wrist right as he opens his eyes. The recruit just manages to get it clear of his skin before Bucky grabs his arm, throwing him to the floor in one practised motion. There’s an immediate _CHUK CHUK CHUK_  around him - all of the room’s guns being loaded and trained on him.

His eyes wide, he takes in his surroundings. Not a cell. Medical chamber. Did he blank out again? Did he disobey? All of the people in the room look nervous, but people often look nervous around him.

"-a success," he hears - suddenly, keenly - from outside. "The subject responded in much the same way it has in training. After some… fine-tuning, we could target simulation to imitate danger, pain, to test what we cannot replicate outside of the LUCID."

"And this is all believable? He does not know he is dreaming?"

"See for yourself."

The bars unlock. The door opens. Two men step in, one clearly higher in status than the other, and it is to this one that Bucky pays attention, despite the quelled desire to keep all eyes on the scientist beside him.

The bars lock. The door shuts. The guns don’t waver.

"What is the name of your most recent HYDRA instructor?" asks the scientist.

Bucky stares at the higher-ranking man for a moment, processing it all in the thunderstorm synapses of his brain. Finally, he answers: “David.”

The scientist, after looking slightly pale in his periphery vision, smiles. “And what was the goal of the exercise?”

Bucky carries on staring at the man. Then: “Pain,” he says.

The scientist turns to the other man, pleased. “See?”

The other man clearly does not entirely see. He steps forward, bending his knees a little in order to be closer to Bucky’s line of sight. He waves a hand back and forth, and Bucky ignores it, eyes never wavering from his face.

"Were you asleep?" the man asks, eventually.

"Sometimes."

"And when you were," the man says, "Were you back here?"

"No."

The scientist’s vaguely nervous treble comes in again. ”As I said, Mr. Serkey, the machine requires some fine-tuning. There are a few - minor - errors to correct to ensure complete adjustment.”

"Make sure you fix them," David says, then turns away, like he doesn’t even know him. "We wouldn’t want a repeat of the last episode."

"No sir," says the scientist, making an approximation of a smile, "We certainly wouldn’t."

The scientist lets him go on ahead out of the door, then turns around to the staff as he reaches it. “Check his responses. Eliminate any substantial deconditioning. Remember: we want him working with us, not resisting.”

Bucky watches the door close, then waits for the inevitable. He has come to regret superior officers coming into this room - it almost always leads him straight back to pain.

They put a bite guard in his mouth and strap him down. The bars lock outside. The voices disappear down the corridor. He’s alone but for the groan of the machines and the talk of medical personnel, which is why, when the process starts, he jumps so hard one of the chair’s metal arms cracks.

_He doesn’t remember you,_  David’s voice says, from nowhere. Bucky’s eyes scavenge the room but he can’t see him, and there are no speakers built into these walls.

_Just like you won’t remember him._

Beneath the screams coming out of this body’s mouth, Bucky steps back and wanders down inside to the place he was when he was asleep. Or sub-asleep. Whatever level of consciousness that was.

It’s dark, and there’s an approximation of a cell. Or maybe it’s a wooden hut, and it’s something other than electricity that he can hear outside, rushing and foaming around the room like waves.

He sits there for a while, and hears screams as gulls and voices just as wind.

There is a man sat there on the corner of the bed.

"You didn’t really think that they’d let you be manipulated like that, did you?"

Bucky doesn’t answer. Even in his own head, he wouldn’t.

"It’s dangerous to be important," David says. It’s too dark to really see him in any detail here.

"I don’t have many choices," Bucky says, echoing his words from earlier.

"No, you don’t."

The gulls scream louder, circling them far above.

"They did this to you," Bucky says. It’s not a question now.

"They did this to me," David says, then looks up at him from the bed. " _I_  did this to me.”

There’s a window beside him and Bucky turns to look out of it. He was right: there are waves. There are rocks, too. There is so much sand.

"They took it out of him," the man says, meaning the version Bucky met when his eyes slipped off him like he was nothing. "Burned it out, when he failed the program. Now he’s just one of their recruits - high in rank, but no real power. No way to escape HYDRA even if he knew the reason why he should."

"Yet you’re here," Bucky says.

"Yet I’m here."

The screeches of the gull break off, then, and the room becomes fuller. More detailed; easier to see somehow. There’s a door on one wall that must lead all the way out to the sand.

"Don’t get stuck in there like he did," David says. "Remember everything you can. I’ll help you if they send you back in there, but they’ve found ways to… program me."

"So you’re part of the machine?"

"No," David says, and a smile comes back in the dark. "I’m not. Never was."

His eyes catch Bucky’s and for half a second Bucky feels the gaze jump to his mechanical arm. ”I’m just the ghost who lives in it.”

-

_Some hours later:_

He wakes.

He is alone in a HYDRA cell.

He calculates the total weaponry in the room and waits for instruction.


End file.
